Asus VivoBook X507 (EJ215T) laptop review: We put it to test in terms of performance, in addition to design, display, keyboard and more.

Asus VivoBook X507 (EJ215T) laptop review: We put it to test in terms of performance, in addition to design, display, keyboard and more.

Asus VivoBook X507 with 15.6-Inch Display and up to 8GB of RAM was announced in India last month at a starting price of Rs 27,990. Asus has partnered with Paytm to sell their VivoBook X507 exclusively on Paytm Mall. Recently, Asus sent a 4GB RAM variant with Intel Core i3-6006U for review, and to be honest, it has been a turbulent journey with the laptop so far. Here is how Asus VivoBook X507 turned out to be during our review:

Asus VivoBook X507 price in India and availability

Asus VivoBook X507 with Intel Core i3-6006U and 4GB RAM costs Rs 27,990. The laptop is available to buy exclusively on Paytm Mall.

Asus VivoBook X507 Review: Design and display

Asus VivoBook X507 sports a 15.6-inch (1,920 x 1,080 pixels) Full HD screen, which is a rare sight for any budget laptop that is priced under Rs 30,000, which is impressive. Again like the one I found previously on my Asus VivoBook S14 review unit, this one features an LED screen. So fortunately enough, I had no complaints about the screen being reflective or causing any glaring distractions whatsoever, which often tends to be the case with budget laptops.

Asus VivoBook X507 Review: The keyboard has a textured surface which feels nice to look at. Bezels around the screen are slim, resulting in more real-estate and screen-to-body ratio.

The design is fairly simple. The laptop feels reasonably light at 1.68kg, which is quite good for one that offers a 15.6-inch screen. Asus has tried to do something unique here with a wave-like top keyboard edge. The keyboard has a textured surface which feels nice to look at. Bezels around the screen are slim, resulting in more real-estate and screen-to-body ratio. Oddly, Asus has put the speakers on the bottom, which I personally find weird. But more on that later.

The VivoBook X507 has two colour variants: Icicle Gold and Star Grey. We got a Star Grey variant for review. It features a fingerprint reader that works flawlessly.

Asus VivoBook X507 Review: Performance and benchmarks

Asus sent a 4GB RAM variant of the VivoBook X507, which runs Windows 10 Home OS and Intel Core i3-6006U CPU under the hood. It also comes with an integrated Intel HD Graphics 520 unit based on Intel Skylake microarchitecture, which was released back in 2015. Although 4GB RAM laptops run just fine with Windows 10 (at least in the beginning), Asus VivoBook X507 is a whole different story. During my brief usage over the last couple of weeks, the laptop was barely usable most of the times. Boot time was longer than usual.

I remember at once instance, the laptop took around 10 minutes to boot. On top of that, Google Chrome tabs would freeze all of a sudden. In that case, all I could do was go to task manager and end the tasks manually before restarting them. To be doubly sure about the whole performance crisis, I decided to deep-clean the laptop once again, hoping to start using it from scratch and getting rid of the problem. But to my disappointment, the laptop showed no sign of improvement at all even after a reset.

Asus X507 Review: Web pages used to be unresponsive and take longer to load. Similarly, switching between the tasks was as troublesome as everything else.

Soon after setting it up, I looked into Task Manager to figure out what could be causing the performance slowdown. I came across certain resource-intensive background processes that were consuming a massive amount of hardware resources, thus leading to performance slowdown to an extent where nothing was usable. Web pages used to be unresponsive and take longer to load. Similarly, switching between the tasks was as troublesome as everything else.

Strangely gaming experience was not bad on this laptop. I tried a few 3 to 4-year-old games that are not overly resource-hungry like Insurgency. Though they ran just fine, the overall experience was not buttery smooth. I could observe an occasional lag but not as bad as it was during browsing. But again, this is not a gaming laptop, and there was nothing much to complain either given that it runs Intel HD Graphics 520.

Asus VivoBook X507 Review: Asus VivoBook X507 left me disappointed with the kind of performance that is simply not expected from a laptop that costs almost Rs 28,000.

I ran a few benchmark tests to see how the VivoBook X507 fares. The laptop recorded a Novabench score of 642. Novabench’s baseline comparison also revealed that the overall score is 11% lower than budget laptops with Intel Core i5-7200U CPU and Intel HD Graphics 620. CPU score, on the other hand, was 23% lower. But surprisingly enough, the GPU score is 47% higher than average budget laptops running on Intel HD Graphics 620.

Overall, Asus VivoBook X507 left me disappointed with the kind of performance that is simply not expected from a laptop that costs almost Rs 28,000. Although I am not sure if the problem is limited to our particular review laptop, it is hard for me to recommend the VivoBook X507 to anyone as far as the day-to-day performance is concerned.

Asus VivoBook X507 Review: Keyboard, sound and battery

Typing experience on Asus Vivobook X507 is fairly average. Keyboard travel distance is short, which results in faster keystrokes. But it also increases the chances of making mistakes especially if you happen to be someone who is used to standalone keyboards. Additionally, I found it weird at first given that I am pretty much used to my personal laptop Dell Vostro 15 3558, which has a full-sized, more comfortable keyboard. But once I got used to this Asus, my typing experience got significantly better and I could type much faster.

Asus has a dedicated numeric keypad, however, unlike the traditional numeric pads, the key for number ‘0’ is smaller. So more often than not, I ended up pressing ‘./delete’ key, which is situated right below the key for number ‘2.’

Asus VivoBook X507 Review: Keyboard travel distance is short, which results in faster keystrokes. But it also increases the chances of making mistakes especially if you happen to be someone who is used to standalone keyboards.

Sound experience is decent enough for its price. But given the fact that the Asus X507U has bottom-firing speakers, the sound gets muffled and you feel a vibration while typing, causing annoyance.

As for the battery performance, it manages to deliver up to 2 hours of backup while typing on Google Docs, having 10 different tabs opened on Google Chrome in the background and the screen brightness level set to maximum. I streamed Guardians of the Galaxy at 1080p on Netflix with screen brightness and sound level set to maximum, and the laptop could last close to 1 hour on a single charge. If you do absolutely nothing and keep the laptop idle with screen brightness level set to minimum, it can easily last up to 8 hours. The battery performance figures aren’t very impressive here.

Asus VivoBook X507 Review: Conclusion

It would not be wrong to call Asus VivoBook X507 an entry-level Windows 10 laptop. Priced at Rs 27,990, the VivoBook X507 flaunts a simple, minimalistic design and with an attractive LED screen, which did not cause a distraction due to the lack of reflectivity, which is impressive. However, when it came to actual performance, the laptop was barely usable, making it hard for me to recommend it to anyone.

Do remember that the kind of experience I have described here may be limited to the 4GB RAM variant or to our test unit. But it is what it is. Furthermore, it has a sub-par battery life, which is again a deal-breaker. So, till Asus manages to fix these problems, I wouldn’t recommend this laptop.